Salt Lake City High School Students To Try on Their Surgical Gloves at SAGES Mini Medical School

For any high school student curious to know if she’s got what it takes to make it as a surgeon, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) will hold its Mini Medical School Boot Camp and Interactive Experience on Saturday, April 5th, from 7:30am to 2:00 pm at the Salt Lake Palace Convention Center as part of the SAGES annual meeting.

Through the program, high school students from the Salt Lake City area will learn about the field of surgery through lecture and simulation so they can begin to appreciate that being in the operating room is rewarding, important and exciting work. The program includes classroom lectures, tours of the SAGES conference learning center and exhibit hall and culminates with the “Top Gun Interactive Experience” – a power packed hour featuring video games that help decrease errors, to robotic helicopters that allow students to show off their skills.

“With projected physician and surgeon shortages in the future, we hope this timely program will promote early decisions to join the profession,” said Dr. James Butch Rosser, Mini-Med School Session Chair, general surgeon at Florida Hospital Celebration Health. Dr. Rosser, who will open up the session, recently authored the 2012 study “The Effect of Videogame “warm-up” on Performance of Laparoscopic Surgery Tasks,” which demonstrated that subjects who completed a “warm-up” session with video games prior to performing laparoscopic tasks were faster than those who did not. The study augmented prior research suggesting that videogames could serve as a cost-effective training platform when used as a preparatory exercise for minimally invasive surgical procedures.

“The high school years are the perfect time for students to explore their interest in the field and to groom their background,” added Dr. Raymond Price, Mini-Med School Session Co-Chair, Director of Graduate Surgical Education at Intermountain Medical Center and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Utah Medical School. “There is no other opportunity quite like the SAGES Mini Medical School that offers such a hands-on experience for those contemplating a future in medicine.”